MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
10 May 2007
So let's say a deranged movie director contacts you. He's doing a film adaptation of your senior year of high school. He wants you to assemble an album's worth of songs for the soundtrack. What've you got? What've you got?
The Bitch is Back by Elton John for my bff Sally, who kicked me to the curb in senior year when I wouldn't hang with the cool kids. A couple of years later I saw her on Wheel of Fortune and she bombed. I was pretty happy about that, to tell the truth.
"I'm the Man" by Anthrax, "Creeping Death" by Metallica, "Broken Whiskey Glass" Jason & The Scorchers, "Touch Of Grey" Grateful Dead, "We're Coming Out" Replacements, "Bring The Noise" Public Enemy. All songs that were played a lot in different situations that year.
Mine'd be all over the place, because of the weird, patchy exposure to music that came with being in pre-internet rural Nebraska.
1. The Fly, U2
2. Head On, the Pixies
3. Feels So Good, Van Halen
4. Begin the Begin, R.E.M.
5. Some goddamned Waterboys song. We'll say "The Whole of the Moon," just to pick one.
6. Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd. The live version. Preferably used in scenes of me driving around town looking angsty. Oh, the fickle Nebraskan chicks.
7. Fascination Street, the Cure. Because it was important to let people know just how alternative I was. How alternative? More alternative than you, sucker.
8. Steam, Peter Gabriel. because listen, fucker, I'm really that alternative.
9. You Shook Me All Night Long, AC/DC because you can not grow up in a town smaller than 10k without liking AC/DC.
10. Black, Pearl Jam, just to emphasize how super-sensitive I am. Preferably played during the third act in another angsty-driving scene.
11. When the Levee Breaks, Led Zeppelin- roll credits, motherfucker, our boy's driving off to Minnesota.
Everything we listened to riding around in my friend Brian's pimped-out yellow Chevy Nova with baby-moon rims. There were four of us who travelled in a pack, and we were sort of confused and wistfully moody a lot. In a small New Jersey town, we were like thousands of other kids, suspecting that there was more going on somewhere Out There but a little bit scared of it. We were also kind of obsessed with 60s/70s hippies, in reaction to world of late-80s Reaganism and the fact that so many of our classmates dreamed only of working on Wall Street. When you look at the Top 100 for my year you may see why we sort of rejected most music you could hear on the radio. There was some of what they called 'alternative' around then, so occasionally we listened to the Siouxsie/Morrissey/Kate Bush sort of thing at the time - though I went that way a little more in college than in my senior year of high school. At 17 I was just picking up the guitar and liked listening to music I could learn to play acoustically.
As to specific music, I kind of answered the question in a post a while back, and here it is. I forgot to mention all the endless Beatles we listened to - we were fans and trivia buffs too - and I adored The Who (still do) and Bruce (ditto). Classic rock: I'm not over it.
Oh I can't think of any particular song, just assume it's a mishmash of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Rage against the Machine, REM, and that fucking Blind Melon song playing over and over and over again.
Donnie Darko did this so well. Throwing in the absurd - I don't like all of these, but it'd be:
Never Tear Us Apart (INXS)
Stray Cat Strut (Stray Cats)
Heaven (Bryan Adams)
Respect (Aretha)
Don't Explain (Dorothy Holiday)
Blister In The Sun (VF)
Wish You Were Here (PF)
My Love Is Chemical (White Nights Soundtrack)
By My Side (Godspell)
Walk Like An Egyptian (GoGos)
For the scenes involving me and my immediate friends:
Rush "Tom Sawyer"
Pink Floyd "Run Like Hell"
The Go-Go's "We Got The Beat"
Berlin "The Metro"
Devo "Through Being Cool"
Laura Branigan "Gloria"
Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams"
Kate Bush "Running Up That Hill"
Yaz "Situation"
Prince "1999"
Duran Duran "Hungry Like The Wolf"
For the scenes involving most of the rest of the school: anything by the Steve Miller Band, Eagles, Ozzy, or AC/DC will do.
Dangerous Type (Cars)
Miss You (Stones)
Call Me (Blondie)
We Are Family (Sister Sledge)
Running on Empty (Jackson Browne)
any Billy Joel song (although I can't stand him now)
The Long Run (Eagles)
Oh, yeah, I forgot about Rush. Stick Tom Sawyer in my list somewhere, too.
Christ, when I was first learning to play bass, I used to fantasize about playing giant arena shows where I'd wow the crowd with perfect covers of Tom Sawyer, or maybe note-for-note recreations of The Wall. Eeep.
This pretty much defines music while I was in high school:
"Smooth" - Santana f/Rob Thomas
"Everything You Want" - Vertical Horizon
"Desert Rose" - Sting
"Say My Name" - Destiny's Child
"Kryptonite" - 3 Doors Down
"Otherside" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Change (In The House Of Flies)" - Deftones
"Country Grammar" - Nelly
God, this is like my high school prom all over again.
I used to have a friend who would sing it in a duet with me and we'd get all maudlin
Me too! We did Godspell Junior Year. I didn't sing it in the production, I was the Learn Your Lessons Girl - I wanted Turn Back O Man, but if I had done it, HS eyebrows would have been unduly scorched. Jesus was soooooo dreamy.
I don't know what the rest of the school listened to, because we were too cool to care, but...
Pogues- Sick Bed of Cuchulain (though Rum Sodomy and the Lash was a requirment at all functions) Sisters of Mercy- Nine While Nine Cure- Fascination Street NoMeansNo- Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed Victims Family- (can't remember the songs tho) Jimi Hendrix- (can't remember which songs tho) Repo Man Soundtrack (required at all functions) Beastie Boys (also required at all functions) Kate Bush- Hounds of Love Pixies Bad Religion
for the extra alternative: Skinny Puppy, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Front 242, Nurse with Wound, Ministry, Chris and Cosey. (Nine Inch Nails were for some reason considered too wimpy and contrived, so not them)
And, lest I forget, all the usual 'party' stuff, most of which I would guess high-school students are still listening to today: Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Buffett, Steve Miller, Legend, the Eagles' Greatest Hits, etc.
Husker Du - "Could you be the One?"
Sonic Youth - "Schizophrenia"
Replacements - "Can't Hardly Wait"
House of Freaks - "Yellow Dog"
The Cure - "In Between Days"
The Smiths - "How Soon is Now"
U2 - "With or Without You"
REM - "Driver 8"
Love and Rockets - "It Could be Sunshine"
Pink Floyd - "Learning to Fly"
Ah, yes. Put on the headphones, crank it up and...MOPE!
1993 -- a fruitful time for music. You've got Grunge at its finest, pop's brief flirtation with Industrial, the emergence of Phish from the Dead's shadow... yeah, good times.
I know this is boring, but the albums already were cut, and their great! The Vile Cherubs-Posthumous Relief, all guys from my senior class, except Seth, who was a Junior, and the last Swiz album, also with guys from my class. They really were the soundtrack.
Since any movie about my high school life would be inevitably dystopian, the soundtrack would feature the worst songs of that year, that anyone heard.
Thusly:
1. Honey, Bobby Goldsboro
2. Little Green Apples, O.C. Smith
3. Judy In Disguise (With Glasses), John Fred and His Playboy Band
4. Simon Says, 1910 Fruitgum Company
5. Lady Willpower, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap
6. (Theme From) Valley Of The Dolls, Dionne Warwick
7. Green Tambourine, Lemon Pipers
8. Indian Lake, The Cowsills
9. Over You, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap
10. Woman, Woman, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap
11. Sealed With A Kiss, Gary Lewis and The Playboys
And, playing over the closing credits:
12. MacArthur Park, Richard Harris
I actually dig MacArthur Park. Bought the single. It was SO out of the box, and weird for that time, or any.
I am also amazed that Gary Puckett and the Union Gap had so many hits that year. And, no, didn't like them much.
BoringPostcards and I are clearly the same age. Just add Roxy Music, Avalon and the Police, Regatta de Blanc & Zenyatta Mondata to his list, along with the heaping helpings of Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell that were the staples of my high school existence and continue to be played at my house even today.
That would be a dull movie: then again, maybe Aki Kaurismäki could make something out of it. Soundtrack-wise, we'd be looking at:
Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
Walk the Dinosaur - Was (not Was)
Love Removal Machine - The Cult
Walk This Way - Run-DMC
World Shut Your Mouth - Julian Cope
Break Out - Swing Out Sister
The Future's So Bright... - Timbuk 3
Fight For Your Right to Party - Beastie Boys
Sign O' The Times - Prince
Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order
Infected - The The
Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
